When the commander had taken stock of the city, he had ordered the machines of war to be assembled. The first and tallest of these was a mobile observation tower, followed by seven large trebuchets for hurling the largest of boulders into and against the fortress, and sixteen low crossbow catapults. The work progressed well, and their encampment spanned all four sides of their target. It was a circle of cloth tents around a square of stone walls. It was the hardness of stone surrounded by the softness of silk.
The imperial commander tried to see clearly. Organized siege would make this rebel city a prison, and time would make this prison a tomb, but an overwhelming assault might end things quickly and bring greater glory. To his young page the commander ordered, “Bring me the hag.” The young page left quickly on his mission, surprised that his Supreme Commander had even noticed her.
It had come to be that an old woman had been following their passage to scavenge from the camp refuse. From her mind’s state it was clear she had but one leg in the world of reality, and among his men it was well known that she had a gift for divination. The page found her picking and foraging near the camp latrine. Her innocent smile and what seemed a look of recognition caught the page off guard. He was prepared for mental imbalance, but saw none. She bowed before the page and said in a tone of reassurance, “One day your virtue shall be your shield and purity your armor.” The young man wondered if this was the start of a long rant, but she continued evenly, and said only, “Take me to the coward.”
She entered his tent and smiled toothlessly, eyes bright beyond her years but never focused on the obviously present. Across her shoulder her bag held the tools of the oracle.
“Sit,” said the commander as if talking to his dog. “Tell me what I want to know,” he whispered. At this she began to cackle and taunted, “what you want to know, or what you want to hear?” His patience thin, he barked, “cast it now,” and to these words she settled by the fire and into a state of cool and systematic resonance.
He heard the age-old songs of her craft emanate from the core of her being as she rocked back and forth, the opened bag upon her lap. With crooked fingers she scrawled upon a tortoise shell the questions for the ancients, and placed it on the fire’s embers while rocking and singing the sounds of the dead. It grated on the commander like a growing toothache, and ended suddenly, with a splitting snap.
For a long silence she sat and stared at the cooling shell reading its cracks and shadows. Her eyes saw past the commander and into the beginning and end of her own long life. “I will tell you as I have been told,” she offered and then began in the voice of one much younger, and of one much farther away.
“Your victory will stand like the tall and hollow lion, and the oak that knows its parents. Its father is destruction from on high, and its mother the worms that move below the ground. It stands and throws its shadow between them both. It binds them together by root and by leaf. The colorful seeds of victory shall hang in high places and bring you praise, but their germination shall bring the end to many.”
She paused and drew a labored breath, “The bear’s steel is the two-edged sword. One edge priest and the other edge warrior, both sharpened by the same stone, she the healer of great suffering. This is the blade that will separate a slave from a king.”
The commander took this phrase of bear and steel to refer directly to him, and was flattered by the description of warrior, priest, and healer combined. He pressed on, looking for more acclaim as her word ‘King’ echoed through the hollows of his mind. The crone was tired now and silent. Finally the commander ordered, “Explain.”
“I see and I say, my lord, but I do not explain,” she replied evenly.
“Will I have victory here old woman?” he pushed.
“You will,” she intoned, still far away in time and place.
He tossed the pouch of meager coins disdainfully in her direction. She held them up to her useless eyes and smiled her toothless grin. Collecting herself and her belongings, she packed up, and as she took leave of the sullen commander and his tent, she began to rave, voicing only the meandering thoughts of a madwoman. She spoke of finding the bird that shared her dreams and of the solace of the raven. Cloaked in the shadows of night she left the cold comforts of the camp, and in the morning light she began leaving with absolute haste this vast region of the north.
Alone in his tent, the commander smiled an ugly grimace and snatched up the coin pouch that had been left behind.
The Siege
The rebel leader was young as rebels often are, handsome and strong by standards, a leader not because of age or standing but because of will and courage. This young insurgent put no faith in the trappings of formal rank or title. Among his tribe he sometimes stood apart, but never above. To all that followed, he was known only as the rebel, respected and loved simply because of who, not what, he was.
His people had always been farmers and merchants. What they would never be, however, were sheep led peacefully to the slaughter. If the inability to pay taxes was rebellion, then they were guilty, and if pitchforks must become spears, then it would be so.
He watched the cloaked one circle the city on horseback tantalizingly close, but just outside the range of arrows bite. He knew the bear whose skin now draped across horse and rider, and thought about the wolves of the highlands and how they circle behind the young, the sick, and the starving. There was no chance to win, survival meant compromise, and reluctantly he sent the city’s four best negotiators out to plead for peace.
The answer came swiftly and loudly. He watched the four taken by sword and led to their fate. Within the hour the trebuchets were fired from each of the four directions. Their ammunition wailed in terror. Their screams increased in pitch and volume as far became near, and then only the sickening thud and cracking of bone and skull, as the four emissaries crashed and rolled from on high into the market square. Unrecognizable now except by clothing, silence was their bitter eulogy.
The blessed act of dig fill and cover renews in season the soul of every farmer. This time, however, it was not seeds of life that they planted, but the seeds of death; and this strange reversal would soon come to define their norm. The season of the grim harvest had begun.
The rebel watched the commander’s troops dig in on every side. The eyes in the high tower had already drawn out the fort’s inner layout. His mind now turned to the civilian population and how best to serve their needs, whatever could be done would be done under the cover of night. This game of chess afforded little movement and no mistakes, but the first strike would come from the enemy troops. The one advantage that the rebels held was that this was their territory, and if civilians could reach the forest unnoticed, they could escape.
His footsteps rang from the bare stone walls as the rebel walked steadily and effortlessly to the room at the far end. This was the last vestige of a life before war, it was bleak and unadorned, a room not fit for habitation, a room now used only for idle storage. The young man stood before the large machine, which to the untrained eye seemed a complicated contraption. It was built and used by his great-grandfather, and it had passed from one generation to the next along with the skill to make it sing.
The young hands that had first used it were now bone within the earth, and yet they reached down to him from ages. What he saw, touched, and heard was what his forefathers had seen, touched, and heard, and it bound them both and gave him strength. With rough cloth he wiped away the dust layer that bore witness to abandonment and disuse. A spider scurried from its woolen threads. Another time he would have carelessly wiped it away with the dust, but now he watched it and was sorry to have destroyed its home and sent it scrambling.
‘Regrettable, another casualty of war,’ he thought and then he sat before his instrument. His feet and hands moved with the speed of practiced lightning. Working the loom had always set his mind at peace, but he was not concentrating on the weaving, he was going through the motions of movement and strategy. Time had no substan
ce here, and the afternoon passed as though it had never been.
He continued effortlessly, a man both totally present, and yet, very much far away. On this day he cared naught for composition or color or sequence, he cared only that this work would bring him mental clarity. He stopped his work at the loom only when his mind had stopped its working. All the possibilities had been considered, all the permutations had been exhausted, and he stood, now confident that his next course of action would be the best one.
Darkness had fallen, as he stretched his tired and weakened frame he thanked his ancestors for the life he had been given. It was time to get back to the serious business at hand, and time he realized, was now everything. Before returning to the company of his men and those he protected, he looked upon what he had woven. Strangely, it was a color he had never used or ever noticed. Before him stretched a sky of blue, dyed from the leaves and flowers of woad that grew with abundance in the hills of his old home region.
He touched his work with a curious fingertip and thought, ‘Too small for a carpet, too plain for a prayer rug, mindless effort with no real purpose.’
Sacrifice
The small children that were by nature so active, now slept with mothers and elders; they were heavily sedated. The ones old enough to walk were left alert, but their faces were wrapped to muffle any cries of pain or fear. All faces were blackened with soot from the lamps, and the clothing worn was also dark. Meager rations had been evenly distributed. The major components of the plan had been explained. There was nothing more to do but wait, and waiting of all the tasks was by far the most difficult.
Now they sat in groups of one hundred with each group being assigned one soldier from the rebel forces. Talking was not permitted, and so only their eyes held their conversations. Some spoke of defiance, some of fear, and all spoke of love and farewells. Hers spoke clearly of loss and sorrow, but much more loudly of strength and resolution.
The rebel’s wife kept her oldest by her side and nursed the baby one last time. Her milk was drying, but her breast would soothe her infant while the sedative took effect. Her husband entered like the wind of a winter’s day. No longer hers alone, he moved with purpose through the throng. His eyes took in all. He stopped to tighten a darkened blanket across the shoulders of an ancient, he moved to wipe a child’s tear and lend his courage to one too young to speak.
In whispered tones he spoke to his soldiers, assuring that each one knew his solemn purpose. As she watched him from her distance, her heart ached within her chest, and she held him within her mind’s embrace. She knew this final one, must last for her remaining lifetime. The moonless power of the night was upon them, and to this power he prayed to keep them safe.
He moved finally to his wife and children and held them tightly one by one. Smoothly he slipped her the sharpened dagger, the loud unspoken truth, that their death was better than their capture. She quickly tucked it under her sleeve. Too soon it was their time, and en masse they moved to the southern wall. The soldiers descended rapidly, the lust of battle was already coursing through their veins. Into the darkness they dropped, and in the blackened silence that followed, the civilians waited with anticipation.
When the sounds of the nighttime battle reached their ears from the far end of the surrounding field, they knew it was their signal. They were lowered by scaffold roughly to the snow-covered ground. Their sentry watched over them with sword drawn until all in their group were down. They wove their way through the protective stakes of sharpened timber, and although they rushed, their pace was a limp with the old and the young. The weaving amble through the angled stakes reminded her of peaceful times spent watching her husband work the loom, and with fierce resolution she shook those memories from her mind.
The smell of death cut through the darkness as they passed near the forgotten carcass of man or beast. She was glad the darkness hid the view, and that the rags that silenced the sound of children also kept them safe from the stench of war’s true horrors. Their party moved as one, spread out upon the killing field like the great mythical serpent. They undulated away from the clanging of steel and the cries of the embattled, until to the ear it sounded merely like the distant drone of children playing.
The leading sentry pawed the snow covered ground frantically. For a time brief by normal standard but an eternity by theirs, he searched. He reminded her of the hungry wolves that dig for a dead elk buried beneath winter’s white blanket. He held his panic in check until at last he was rewarded. He pulled away the canvas cover to reveal the opening of the well-placed tunnel, and into its cold blackness they descended.
They moved as the blind move, an outstretched hand on frozen wall, silent and with only one direction—forward. Under the enemy camps they pressed on, moving quietly but for the occasional stumble. Finally they reached the hidden exit near the forest’s promised safety and emerged from their underground corridor under the watchful eye of their armored guardian. She drank the cold fresh air like a baby fresh from the womb, and even in the thick darkness she saw their protector was not much more than a child himself. The noise of the distant fray was carried softly to them upon the night winds.
She held her children close, one by hand and one at breast, and looked with gratitude to their young protector. No cry escaped his lips as she saw the sword emerge from his chest. She saw his pain upon his face, and knew his silence was his last heroic act. As he fell where he was struck, she released her hold on the small hand and made distance. With a brief struggle the imperial soldier had freed his saber and now rushed to cleave her lone-standing son. From behind, her blade was drawn across the enemy’s throat, and if he could have screamed he would have, but he fell in silence as the white snow pooled black within the darkness.
She helped the others move to the safety of the forest, and only after many miles did they rest and recoup their strength. No man should come between a bear and her cubs. By dawn’s light she looked down at her hands stained red with blood, and in the growing light she remembered they wore this gown after both her children were birthed. She thought with love about the one who led them, her husband and the father of her sons. His sacrifice would not be in vain, he would be remembered by his children and his people. It would be woven into song and story for all to know and for generations to recall.
But for now she pulled her rough wool scarf up around her face, to keep her from the cold and to hide her freezing tears. She gathered up their people and with her as their protector, they moved on.
First Strike
The first major strike came the following evening. The catapults were positioned and the targets picked. Fire bolts the lengths of two men were launched systematically, accurately, and in seemingly endless array. The urine and grey water miserly collected for four months could not extinguish all the fires, and so it was that the main granary went upward as flame. While the imperial forces watched and cheered this, their first spectacle of war, fully half of the children and women had been lowered over the great walls, and spirited through darkness of tunnel under enemy lines and to the safety and freedom of the protective woodlands.
In morning’s light the full extent of the damage could be seen, and its seriousness was written in the smoke and embers that hovered in the icy air. Over half of their stockpiled food had been destroyed and the charred bodies of human and livestock alike lay strewn upon the alleys, squares, and streets.
The young leader organized the burial detail amid the wailing and weeping of the wounded and the grieving. For the next four nights, by the sliver of the new moon, his men would by rope descend the walls. In the darkened pitch with arrow, spear, and sword, they launched a noble plan of harass and divert, while giving the innocents the precious time needed to flee.
At week’s end food was strictly rationed. The civilian population had escaped and continued to move onward seeking the safety of distance. A mere three thousand men were left to stand their ground within the walls. They faced two enemies. The first was the tangib
le weapons of wood and metal. The second hung in air like a ghost, the specter of starvation. It haunted the city fortress from the rising smoke that danced with the gathering of the crows.
In the imperial camp the commander’s elation had begun its bitter fermentation as he realized that the sounds of civilian life no longer came from inside the rebel city. He understood now that the dark night skirmishes had been a ruse, and in fact a most successful one. When all the tunnels were destroyed, he would turn his hatred and animosity fully on those still living within the fortress walls.
When the night forays came no more, the commander sent a full brigade against the southern wall with siege ladders and grappling hooks. They were slowed by the concealed pits dug months prior, and the ladders offered no protection from the maelstrom of arrows launched upon the impeded forces. In all, on that one day, one hundred and sixty three men died and forty-four were seriously wounded, all imperial troops.
Drunk with anger, the commander, twice more, on different walls and different times, tried again and obtained almost exactly the same results. A night raid launched by his cavalry was also disastrous. The field was well mined, and in light of early morning, seven lame and abandoned horses were coaxed through the soundly protected gate. The rebels ate well that night.
Finally he accepted that although siege by attrition was far less glorious than direct confrontation, it was in fact the correct strategy. He would stand down and allow nature to take its course, very much like he had allowed gravity to carry the boulder to its target at the shadowed cavern entrance. Famine would be their just retribution, and their death would come at his command. He did not realize that he had underestimated both the tenacity of the rebels, and the sovereignty of Death, and that his forces would remain entrenched here for the next eleven months.
At night, sated and besotted with drink and wrapped within the fetid bear hide, he would feel his mangled face and long for his return to the capital and his next chance to hunt down and kill a monk and all who are close to him.
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